Devon river named and shamed

Sewage and pesticide spills affecting the Avon

South West Water has been urged to do more to protect Devon’s vulnerable rivers from sewage and pesticide spills.

Officials from the company and the Environment Agency faced questions from South Hams Council’s overview and scrutiny committee over issues ranging from pollution and water quality to household water bills and nationalisation.

Council chairman Guy Pannell (Lib Dem, South Brent) said the number of discharges of untreated sewage into the River Avon at Diptford had risen to 119 in 2022 from 83 last year.

The Avon had been ‘named and shamed’ by the Wildlife Trusts as being among the country’s 20 rivers most at risk from human and farm sewage, pesticides and fertilisers.

”The Wildlife Trusts chief executive described it as a national disgrace,” said Cllr Pannell.

“I feel very ashamed that my beautiful river is being called a national disgrace.”

And Cllr Matt Steele (Lib Dem, Ivybridge East) said there had been only two days in the past two months when there had been no sewage ‘dumps’ into the River Erme.

“Residents are incensed by seeing sewage flowing through the centre of Ivybridge,” he said.

South West Water’s director of external liaison Alan Burrows told councillors: “No pollution is good pollution.” And he said the company had learned from previous cases.

Serious pollution incidents had fallen, he said, and SWW was aiming for zero by 2025.

Pollution from storm overflows was also reducing, he claimed, and the South Hams had good quality bathing waters.

Clarissa Newell, the Environment Agency’s area manager, said there had been a huge improvement in water quality in the last 20 years, and the district’s bathing waters were the best they had ever been.

“The South Hams is in a really good position for quality of water,” she said. 

Cllr Pannell asked what measures SWW was taking to address water shortages such as the one which caused a hosepipe ban last summer, and  if the company had plans for new reservoirs.

Mr Burrows said there were new resources such as a desalination plant and new water mains in Cornwall. Water from a new reservoir in Somerset could be pumped anywhere in the network. He also said households could be encouraged to use less water.

Cllr Pablo Munoz (Lib Dem, Ivybridge West) asked why, when SWW’s parent company Pennon was paying billions of pounds to shareholders, westcountry households paid the highest water bills in the country.

The company’s director of asset management Mark Worsfold said shareholders expected a return on their investment.

He went on: “If we didn’t give them their dividend, they wouldn’t give us their money, and we wouldn’t be able to fund our investment programmes. They would take their money and put it somewhere else where they would get a higher return.”

Councillors asked if the water industry should be nationalised again rather than being in private hands, but Mr Burrows pointed out that if that happened, it would have to compete for funding alongside education, the NHS, social housing and other government budgets